Biokyra

Sunday, October 18, 2015

According
toQMED, besides
regulatory complexity and the challenges of handling large companies,
healthcare firms' profit margins are falling leading medtech companies to rely
more heavily on contract manufacturers – which, in these days, quickly turns
into contract development: from early product design to the manufacture of
finished products.

Since
companies are looking for assistance with product development, working with
contract firms often signifies cost savings in the long run. “Decisions made
early in the design cycle typically end up driving a majority of a finished
product’s ultimate cost”. “The earlier you can look at a design, the earlier
you can optimize it for manufacturing,” says Tim Hopper, CMO at EG-GILERO.

Such partnerships, between a design and a
manufacturing company, bring together the theoretical and practical, according
to Betten. “The merger gives the organization the ability to go from A to Z,”
Betten said Wednesday at MD&M Philadelphia.

Monday, October 5, 2015

One of the changes we have been seen in the
medical device sector is the so-called Maker Movement, which transforms product
development approach we have today and turns people with no experience in the
area into “healthcare technology tinkerers.”

One of the most notoriouscases in the Robohand, a prosthetic hand developed by the
Australian woodworker Richard van As, who lost four fingers in an accident in
2011. Together with the American-based special effects designer Ivan Owen, they
developed a more affordable Robohand using a MakerBot Replicator 2 desktop 3-D
printer.

The creators uploaded the design into Thingiverse.com, enabling anyone in the world with
Internet to access plans for the device. Anyone can also modify the design or
use it as a starting point for a new one. Another recent and similar example
was the Brazilian case that we wrote about previously in our blog.

“There are now hundreds of different prosthetics available on
Thingiverse for free to download for anyone,” says Johan-TillBroer, PR manager
at Makerbot. The websiteshows it has helped distribute at least
one 3-D printed hand in 40 different countries.